


Anchor

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [29]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (The Shimada clan gonna Shimada clan), Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of past child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 03:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17541887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: Hanzo has a bad day; Jesse provides cuddles and some philosophy. Probably set a little bit into the future, there’s a looot of character development and healing to go before we get here haha.





	Anchor

Jesse lay sprawled on the couch when Hanzo slammed the door to the apartment behind him, newly awoken from a nap if the way his hair stood up in odd ways and the sleepy flush in his cheeks were any indication. He gave a cheerful sound of greeting and lazily kicked away the blanket as he watched Hanzo lock the door and take his boots off.

“Hey there. Rough day?”

Hanzo made a curt sound of confirmation and shrugged off his coat with terse, impatient movements, all but throwing it at the coat stand and snarling when it simply flopped limply to the ground. He retrieved it from the floor and noticed that Jesse was watching him with badly hidden amusement from where he was pushed up on an elbow to see over the arm of the sofa. Hanzo gave a longsuffering sigh and hung the coat up properly with exaggerated care, giving a sharp gesture in lieu of saying ‘ _there, was that better?’._ Proving yet again that his glower truly no longer commanded any kind of respect Jesse chuckled, his eyes crinkling and warm.

“Fine, _fine,_ just laugh at me,” Hanzo sighed, knowing he was being petty and childish for all it was mostly in jest.

“Ain’t ever met a man who could conceivably be closer to settin’ fire to something with his eyes,” Jesse said cheerfully. “You amaze and astound me daily even after all these years, Mr. Shimada.”

Hanzo groaned, softened despite himself by the fondness in Jesse’s voice, even within his current private cloud of hot bitter vexation. He folded his arms tightly over his chest and leaned against the wall, looking restlessly around the room for something to do, something to tidy away or move — he didn’t know what to do with the tight mean energy winding like taut steel cables through his shoulders and down his spine.

“C’mere?” Jesse said finally, having watched this for a while, opening his arms and lifting his eyebrows invitingly.

Wordlessly Hanzo stomped over and slid onto the couch, snuggling in as close as he could get and burying his face in Jesse’s chest — thankfully the sofa was a solid, monstrously oversized piece of furniture; they could both fit quite comfortably on it side by side, which had come in handy on several occasions. Jesse wrapped his arm around Hanzo’s stiff, all-but-literally-fuming form, running his palm over the small of his back in soothing circles as if to chase away some of the tightness there.

Hanzo took a few deep breaths, focusing on the warmth of Jesse’s body all along his front. Despite the fact that he still felt like tearing the whole damn world into so much confetti Hanzo closed his eyes and nuzzled slowly at Jesse’s chest, breathing in the smell of him — cigarette smoke and haphazard aftershave and under that the warm, comforting scent of his bare skin. Briefly Hanzo unclenched one hand from a fist for long enough to reach up and undo a couple of buttons on Jesse’s shirt so he could press his face against chest hair and naked skin.

Jesse chuckled, tucking his leg over Hanzo’s hip to draw him in even closer. Hanzo wriggled obligingly into place, seeking out every scrap of contact he could as one of Jesse’s hands moved to cradle the back of his head.  

Hanzo pressed a kiss to Jesse’s collar bone, the black jagged edges of his mood still churning on within his chest but… in a marginally less omnidirectional way. He supposed the world wasn’t an irredeemably insufferable and cruel place in _every_ respect.

“Wanna talk about it?” Jesse mumbled eventually, kissing the top of his head.

“No,” Hanzo said tersely, then: “...yes.” His hand uncurled again from its fist to rest gently on Jesse’s waist. He leaned his forehead against Jesse’s shoulder. “I — don’t know.”

“That’s fine too,” Jesse said amiably. He stroked through Hanzo’s hair, twining locks of it around his fingers in his sweet, absent-minded way.  

Hanzo sighed, some of the tightness finally melting out of his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around Jesse as well as the small space allowed, tucking his face into the curve of Jesse’s throat and closing his eyes. To talk about it meant he would have to figure out what the hell was going on himself; always a daunting prospect.

These sudden bursts of mood were easier to weather these days — he had, over the years, learned what would set them off and how to ride the wave of it until it faded once more, without necessarily acting on it in the moment, and could sometimes avert them altogether if he caught the signs early enough. With time the episodes had grown shorter and less ruinous too, so that even when they did arrive it didn’t seem quite so world-endingly intense anymore. He still felt raw and bruised inside, though, the sensation like an oil slick spilled into his blood, or like a thunderstorm bound within his nerves. Stranger than that, he felt _young_ , almost like a sulking child throwing a tantrum, and in the company of anyone else he would have simply tried to squash it down into non-existence in annoyance, impatient with himself and the irrationality of it.

The sound of Jesse breathing deeply and calmly close by dulled the edge of it, though, giving Hanzo some room to draw in air himself and think.

He peeled back the superficial edges of the wound — the boiling anger and restlessness that had hounded him through the day — in a way that was starting to become understandable to him with practice, laying open the real hurt beneath it. It took some time to track down what had set it off this time, but then… he had time. Jesse never pushed him, not about this.  

When he finally spoke he kept his eyes closed, focusing on the quiet warmth of Jesse’s body against him. “I saw two children playing this morning. Siblings, I think, from the way they spoke to each other. And I remembered… we were about the same age when we were not allowed to play anymore. Well,” he amended, “Genji still tried to pull me along occasionally a while longer, because he never listened anyway. That was ever his prerogative. But it had been made clear to us that… that it was time for us — for me — to apply ourselves wholly to less frivolous pursuits. At the time I was proud that they thought me ready to…”

Trailing off he fiddled with the collar of Jesse’s shirt, rubbed the soft-worn fabric between his fingers. It seemed strange still, that something so small as children’s voices raised in amicable bickering should be able to hit something tender and wounded inside him and send him spiraling like this, but it was hardly something he could get away from — he’d identified it happening too many times at this point to be able to deny it.  

Jesse shifted, his hand coming to rest flat against Hanzo’s back, a soothing steadying touch keeping him safely against him. “And you were how old at the time?”

“…I had just turned twelve, I believe. Genji was nine but — seemed younger, I suppose.” He stopped himself from saying something like ‘coddled’. Having seen through the rice paper thin layer of resentment and bitterness covering up the real hurt, he had known in his heart of hearts for over twenty years that it hadn’t been Genji’s fault, any of what had happened. It had simply been a less dangerous place to lay the blame than where it belonged. The knowledge still sat uneasily in his head, like two overlapping images trying to occupy the same space.

“That’s, uh. That’s messed up, not gonna pussyfoot around that one.”

“I never considered it so at the time,” Hanzo said, taking the coward’s way out of commenting on the merits of the statement.

They had been caught sneaking out once, when Hanzo was fifteen — the last time; Hanzo had flatly refused any further invitations to misbehave after that, and Genji had eventually learned to stop asking.

He still remembered the shame and mortification of that day in a way that went beyond normal memory, like it had been imbedded into his spine, merged with the bone, become indistinguishable from the structure of the rest of his body, the feeling all the more insidious for having been so frequent a guest. His head bent as their uncle continued to berate them in a cold, disdainful torrent, the sting and ache of the blow across his cheek still blooming under the skin, the taste of blood thick in his mouth, even Genji quiet for once, uncharacteristically wide-eyed and timid where he stood behind him — the resentment coiling like a frenzied venomous animal in his chest, some leveled at Genji for having talked him into breaking the rules, but mostly at himself for having been weak and foolish enough to go along with him instead of remembering himself and protecting them both, as he should have.

An echo of that same shame shuddered down his spine at the memory, once hot and dizzying as a blade taken straight out of the forge and dragged over bare skin and now softer, faded and diminished with age, and accompanied by a great sadness he found hard to name. Next to the solidness of Jesse’s body and the intertwining sound of their breathing it seemed peculiarly distant, the ghost of a ghost; for most of his life that shame had been ready to wash over him like a crushing tidal wave at any moment, at the most fledgling instigation, and now it merely rippled gently over the surface of his awareness.

“What about your dad, didn’t he have anythin’ to say about it? He wasn’t an entirely unreasonable sort, from what you’ve said.”

Hanzo shrugged as well as he could lying on his side, half leaned against Jesse’s chest. “Perhaps, if someone had brought it to his attention. We mostly spent our days with tutors and other family members, apart from him. He was always… busy.” Because dishonesty had never been his way he had to add: “And grieving, I think, though he never said so outright. He had loved our mother. I — I would never want to be another burden to him.”

Their father had been closed off in his grief — not exactly an expression of rejection, all of him simply something… remote and unreachable, like a solitary island in the middle of a vast open ocean. You could stand on the shore and look for it or you could drown trying to reach it, and that was that. When he did turn his full attention on you it felt like being held in the unflinching brightness of a lighthouse beam; not unfriendly, not always unsympathetic if you caught him in the right mood, but uncomfortably sharp and illuminating by its very nature.

It was hard, sometimes, to remember the man his father had been behind all the bonds of duty and tradition tying them together, and the shock of him being gone.

“But — you were his kids.”

Not quite sure what to make of that Hanzo wrinkled his nose in confusion and said: “Yes?”

“Well,” Jesse said eventually, in that light voice he used when he was more emotional about something than he was willing to deal with at the moment. “Sounds like a bad scene all round to me.”

“I suppose in hindsight it must have been, considering I am the end result,” Hanzo said dryly, and Jesse’s hands tightened on him for a moment.

“Hey now,” Jesse said, thumb circling over Hanzo’s shoulder blade. “No call for that.”

Hanzo reached up and tucked Jesse’s hair away from his forehead, gently smoothing it down with his fingertips. Jesse gazed back at him, smiling crookedly, hair and clothes ruffled, a floral pattern imprint on his cheek from having slept on a cushion. “Oh, very well. If you insist.”

So many of the tight iron bands of discipline and shame that had used to give his life structure were gone. He still didn’t entirely know how to fill up the empty space they left behind, for all that he could finally move freely.

Jesse, correctly reading the silence that followed, said: “What’s up?”

“It still does not seem _just_ ,” Hanzo said quietly, brushing his thumb over Jesse’s cheekbone. “That I should get to have this, when better men are dead and gone and never got the chance to… hm.”

Jesse looked at him for a long time, steady and frank and still smiling slightly, a strange glint in his eye.

“Ain’t no justice but what people make for themselves,” Jesse said finally, like someone who knew he was speaking the truth. “The good die young, ain’t no one marking the fall of sparrows, children get born into violence and strife — an old bastard like me gets to wake up next to you every morning, after all the shit I’ve done.” He ignored Hanzo’s attempt at protest. “No rhyme or reason to anythin’ if you look at it that way. Sometimes you get dealt a bad hand right from the start and you play it the best you can. Dunno ‘bout you, but I’ve had enough bad luck in my time. I’m not letting go of the good, even if I gotta stick it up my sleeve and run like hell.”

Hanzo blew out a breath. In his current state he doubted dwelling on it would be very productive, anyway, and Jesse got more distressed over Hanzo’s self loathing than he liked to let on. “I suppose you have a point.”

Some of the strange intensity faded from Jesse’s expression; he shrugged lightly. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day, right?”

Hanzo snorted and leaned his forehead against Jesse’s collarbone, brushing a kiss over his chest. “At the very least _something_ in there seems to be regularly going cuckoo,” he said, tapping his finger to Jesse’s forehead, and Jesse laughed delightedly.

“Oooh, that’s me told. I mean it, though. See, that’s the thing about family,” Jesse expounded, waving a nonchalant hand as he spoke. “I didn’t have any and you had, pardon me for sayin’ so, entirely too much. Fucks you up coming and going.”

“An observation as incisive as it is unfit for polite company.”

Jesse gave an unconcerned grunt. “Can’t say I’ve ever come across anythin’ of that description, should be safe.”

Hanzo raised an eyebrow. “Really? Never?”

“Just ‘cause a shark puts on a fancy tie don’t mean it ain’t a fuckin’ shark.”

Hard pressed to dispute the accuracy of any of this Hanzo just gave a ‘good point’ sort of noise and reached out to smooth his thumb over Jesse’s eyebrow, watching the crow’s feet around his eyes deepen as he smiled.

“I think I scared a man in a grocery store earlier today,” Hanzo said after a moment, only just remembering it.

Seeming to find this idea far too funny for comfort Jesse said: “Yeah?”

“He was being insufferably rude to the cashier over matters clearly outside of her control,” Hanzo murmured, feeling slightly embarrassed now at the memory of what, in hindsight, might have been an overreaction fuelled by his bad mood. The girl had seemed grateful afterwards, though, in a wide-eyed, awed sort of way. Perhaps that was the important part.

“Well, sounds to me like he got what was comin’ to him,” Jesse said cheerfully.

“It seemed unfair that she should have to tolerate a grown man shouting at her in public for simply doing her job. It… occurs to me now that I could have handled the situation with more subtlety, though.” Hanzo felt his cheeks grow faintly warm but couldn’t help smiling as Jesse made a sound that could only be described as a chortle and squeezed him tighter for a moment.

“Any collateral damage I ought to know about?”

Hanzo hummed, mock-mournfully. “The poor man broke his wrist.”

“That so?”

“He lost his temper and threw a punch; I just so happened to step aside at the same time and he hit bare concrete,” Hanzo shrugged. He might not be as young as he used to be — though Jesse regularly accused him otherwise, mostly in bed and mostly looking happily dazed, which was gratifying — but it would be a sad day indeed when he would need to actually lay a finger on some common bully in a supermarket to take him out. “A regrettable accident. After that he did not seem so eager to pursue the issue anymore.”

Jesse grinned, a sharp quick thing. “Funny, that. They usually don’t, your garden-variety bully.”

“Hm.” Hanzo touched Jesse’s face with his fingers and rested their foreheads together, letting his eyes slip closed as Jesse made a soft sound and leaned into it. Jesse cupped the back of his head and twined his fingers into his hair, a cradling, protective sort of gesture.

After a while Jesse pulled back enough to search Hanzo’s face for a moment before saying: “Hey, you wanna have a nap before we go get dinner?”

Hanzo raised his eyebrows and gestured at the blanket bunched up in the opposite corner of the couch, beneath their legs. “Did you not just…”

“Oh, I got another one in me,” Jesse said breezily, idly brushing their feet together. “You underestimate me.”

“Very well, then,” Hanzo said and leaned to get the blanket, pulling it up over the both of them. The toll of the tension he’d carried through the day was indeed starting to make itself known, his shoulders feeling stiff and sore and the fatigue setting in like a layer of lead over his senses. If Jesse was happy to play pillow for the duration, all the better.  

Before settling down Hanzo stretched to press a soft kiss to Jesse’s forehead, earning him a small sound somewhere between pleased and surprised. He let Jesse draw his face down for a proper kiss, their lips lingering together long and patient and light. Jesse’s fingers slipped from his jaw and back into his hair.

The still-smoldering embers of Hanzo’s discontent subsided even further, like a small child rescued from a tantrum by a fond word and a promise of sweets.

He breathed out, letting the tip of his nose brush Jesse’s.

“I love you,” he said quietly, sliding his eyes open, anchoring himself in one of the few things about himself he knew to be unequivocally true these days, and Jesse’s fingers paused in his hair for a moment before they resumed.

“Hey, I’m pretty darn partial to you too,” Jesse said, his voice hoarse and warm and close.

**Author's Note:**

> The most important of headcanons: Jesse McCree, master of the cooldown hug.


End file.
